1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing method and an apparatus thereof, and in particular, to a method of image depth estimation and an apparatus thereof.
2. Description of Related Art
In recent years, a three-dimensional (3D) image display is gradually popular, and requirements for 3D image data are gradually higher. However, most of image data is still two-dimensional (2D) data. When an original 2D image is converted into a 3D image, image depth is an important parameter in the conversion. The image depth refers to a distance from a view port to an object in the image, and can be used to generate two somewhat different images on the left and right for a left eye and a right eye to watch respectively, so that a user has a feel of watching a 3D image by taking advantage of parallax between the eyes. However, since the algorithm is very complex, real time 2D-to-3D image conversion is very difficult. Therefore, how to rapidly obtain a parameter, for example, a depth value of each pixel in the image, required by the 2D-to-3D image conversion is an important topic. In the conventional technology, in some methods, depth value estimation is accelerated by using information among frames. For example, the depth value is estimated by using an object moving distance in successive frames of a video film. However, when a scene or a main object in the image changes or rapidly moves, the depth value of the each pixel cannot be accurately estimated through this method. Moreover, when a front and back relation of the object in the image is indefinite, for example, a front object masking a back object does not exist, the image depth estimation is also difficult.